Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Pulitzer Prizes, 2008 (III)

In connection with an article I'm working on, Columbia University sent me a complete list of all the jurors for the music prize. If you've ever wondered who decides on the winners of this extremely visible prize, wonder no more. The (slightly ragged-looking) table below lists all Pulitzer music prize jurors since 1943 and how many times they served.

13 comments:

I can't answer that first question, but as to the second, 2005, the year Steven Stucky's Second Concerto for Orchestra won - premiered by the LA Phil. The nominated finalists that year were You Are by Steve Reich and Dialogues, by Elliot Carter. With the Stucky, those are three rather different places on the new-music spectrum. (Carter: oldest composer ever to be dominated for a Pulitzer.)

Empiricus, I knew I shouldn't have clicked on your link. Anyone have some brain bleach handy? Even after all these years, I still can't believe that Swed was who the Times chose to replace Martin Bernheimer, who's been on 3 panels.

In any case, the Pulitzer for music doesn't rate at all, in my view. It's the Grawemeyer Award that counts, I'd say. Look at this list of past winners:

To be fair, the Grawemeyer is open to everybody, not just American composers, so it's a lot easier for them to pick a piece of music that everybody can look back on 20 years later and say, "Ah! Masterpiece!" Obviously Boulez, Saariaho, Birtwistle, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, et al would never be eligible for a Pulitzer.

That said, it is a little shameful that Tower, Corigliano, Adams, and Currier should ALL be awarded the Grawemeyer before the Pulitzer committee got around to selecting them...

To be fair, the Grawemeyer is open to everybody, not just American composers, so it's a lot easier for them to pick a piece of music that everybody can look back on 20 years later and say, "Ah! Masterpiece!"

The American Grawemeyer Award winner composers overlap a bit with the Pulitzers, but not the partcular works: Kernis, Corigliano, Adams, Husa (a composer I've never heard). I ought to investigate who serves on the Grawemeyer juries.

Miles K. - served seven times. The second row is wrong and I'll remove it.